Kelly: Xanadu ‘architect of record' feels he's gotten a bad rap

David Jansen blames developer budget-cutting on an exterior that many New Jerseyans call an eyesore.

Such is the plight of David Jansen.

He is the official "architect of record" for Xanadu, the empty Meadowlands hulk with the bar-coded-stripes-and-plaids façade that Governor Christie called "the ugliest damn building in New Jersey and maybe America."

One problem: Jansen may be the architect of record, but the ugly façade wasn't his idea. He just drew the plans.

"People only know half of the story," he said.

For the past three years, Jansen has silently endured barbs as the 2.4-million-square-foot Xanadu has sat empty, its financing in limbo and politicians and voters questioning why public land was abused this way.

Late Friday, after the announcement of a new developer, a new name for the project and more financing from New Jersey, Jansen decided to tell his side of the story.

"There is an awful lot of criticism floating around," the 55-year-old Jansen said by phone from his Toronto office. "But I was never the author of Xanadu."

Jansen's job was essentially to take the measurements and produce the blueprints — which makes him the official architect of record. But that title, he said, also made him a convenient scapegoat.

The story of how such a misunderstanding was constructed is almost as weird as Xanadu itself — a collection of loopy curves, colors and corners. A key turning point seems to be March 2008.

Xanadu's concept designer, David Rockwell, had just quit the project, claiming the developer essentially mutilated his ideas as costs mounted, including the color scheme for the building's exterior.

Rockwell, with a highly praised track record of innovative designs for restaurants, hotels and even baseball stadiums, issued a searing, wash-my-hands-of-Xanadu statement, claiming his firm "was not responsible for the look"

and had only done "preliminary design work" for Xanadu.

The blame, Rockwell said, belonged to the developer and "another firm responsible for coordinating all design elements."

That firm was believed to be David Jansen's, the Toronto-based Adamson Associates.

On Friday, Rockwell officials declined to discuss new plans for Xanadu — and the ugly-colors label it has endured. Instead, Rockwell's outside spokesman, Joe DePlasco, referred again to the firm's 2008 statement.

"We have no comment on that stuff," DePlasco said of the recent ugly label and new developer.

In early 2008, the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority was taking its own share of criticism as more people passed Xanadu on the New Jersey Turnpike and seemed to shout a collective: "Who's the idiot who dreamed up those colors?"

Without Rockwell to take the heat, the Sports Authority called in Jansen to explain things.

As the architect of record, it was Jansen's task to translate Rockwell's design ideas into detailed blueprints. It's a job he is famous for.

Jansen's firm has drawn the plans for the World Financial Center in Manhattan and helped fix the center after the 9/11 attacks. His firm is now involved in three of the four Ground Zero skyscrapers. It also produced blueprints for the Goldman Sachs office towers in Jersey City and Manhattan as well as the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Jansen came to the Meadowlands in March 2008 and explained that Xanadu "was intended to be a playful building. It wasn't intended to be a serious building."

Those words might have sounded good in an architecture class. But to the political players at the sports authority, Jansen's explanation was the verbal equivalent of chum amid a school of sharks.

Then came Christie. He called Xanadu "a failed business model." He added, "I can't take it anymore" and suggested he would like to demolish it.

In February, a 50-foot portion of the roof of Xanadu's indoor ski slope collapsed under heavy snow. In mid-April, a Quinnipiac University poll revealed that 74 percent of New Jersey residents thought Xanadu was "ugly" while only a paltry 8 percent found it "attractive."

But last week, the project received new life. Even though $1.9 billion had been spent already, the developers of Minnesota's Mall of America agreed to pour in as much as another $1 billion. New Jersey would add as much as $200 million in low interest financing and tax breaks.

The project also is getting a new name — American Dream @ Meadowlands.

All of this seems fine to David Jansen.

"There is nothing wrong with the original concept," he said of the color scheme. "The problem is nobody executed it properly."

As financing dwindled and eventually dried up, Jansen said, Xanadu's developers started cutting back. The first target was the exterior.

Jansen said the stripes-and-plaids design was not supposed to be the foreground. The colors were supposed to be a backdrop to a landscape of digital displays, cascading lights, pulsating helixes over entrances and extensive landscaping. When the budget cutters were through, all that was left was the ugly color scheme.

He said he had no choice but to pick up the scattered pieces and assemble them as best he could.

"Whether you like the colors or not, what you are seeing was intended to be the background," he said.

Jansen compared the trimmed-down Xanadu to stripping a theater stage of props, lights and sets and leaving the back curtain for the audience to look at — under a harsh light.

"That's what happens when people run out of funds," he said. "It's like looking at a half-dressed model. Until you have the funds to complete everything, you're looking at a half-dressed building."

Why did he stay so silent amid all the criticism?

"If I started defending it in the press, even more would stick," Jansen said. "So I just stayed quiet."

He says he has not been consulted by the new developers.

"They are still in the visualization process," he said.

Does he want to return to the swamps of the Meadowlands?

"That is a very good question," Jansen said. "I would like to wait to see what is being proposed."